


Chrysalis

by Silvana_Crowe



Category: RWBY
Genre: Character Study, F/F, F/M, Gen, Spoilers (minor) for up to end of season 5
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-24
Packaged: 2019-03-23 08:27:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13783632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silvana_Crowe/pseuds/Silvana_Crowe
Summary: This is a character study of both Blake and Ilia and how similar thoughts and interactions led two people in very different directions."There was a time when Blake looked at Adam and would have followed him anywhere.""There was a time when Ilia looked at Blake and would have followed her anywhere."





	Chrysalis

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dongyrn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dongyrn/gifts).



> This is a present for dongyrn, who loved Ilia in Season 5. <3

There was a time when Blake looked at Adam and would have followed him anywhere.

He was strong, and brave, and willing to do what needed to be done to protect their people when everyone else was busy trying to play nice with the humans. As if that had ever helped the Faunus before. She was content, more than content, to go with him to continue with the White Fang even after her parents had ceased their involvement, even with her father’s less than subtle encouragement that she should distance herself from the group as well.

And then one day she looked at him and realized that something wasn’t right. It hadn’t been an immediate concept. It took its time to percolate, forming slowly with every mission that got more and more violent, every new voice, both human and Faunus alike, added to the population condemning the ‘radical terrorist’ group. Then she was waiting for him to spot a train of dust from the Schnee’s. They had always fought so well together, perfect halves to the same coin, he liked to say. But when he callously brushed off the lives of the people on the train whose only fault was that they were human?

Blake wondered if she had ever known him at all.

Severing the train, leaving the White Fang, passing for human, and starting at Beacon, they were all a mass of difficult decisions that had led to something beautiful in her new team, her new friends. She finally got to see how a partner should act when they actually cared about her when her teammates did their collective best to keep her together and with her head on straight through the Torchwick fiasco, through the entire wonderful year at Beacon.

When Adam came back with his so called ‘love’ she was able to see it for the twisted possession it was, even if she couldn’t stop him from hurting Yang. So she ran, again, but this time she had family to run to and a friend that wasn’t willing to be left behind and through it all she found peace with herself as an individual, as a being separate from Adam in a way she hadn’t even at Beacon where she had mostly just tried to pretend he hadn’t existed in the first place. Back in Menagerie, surrounded by constant reminders of everything that was happening with the White Fang and the world, she was forced to come to terms with it.

And as she stopped Sun from running after a fleeing Adam into the woods around Haven Academy, as she looked at every one of her people that had stood up to help her in this fight, as she met Ilia’s eyes without shame or guilt or anger present in either of them for the first time that she could consciously remember, Blake decided that for once she was more than confident in herself and her decisions. So she went inside to face her old team.

Turning her back on Adam? It was the best choice she had ever made.

* * *

 

There was a time when Ilia looked at Blake and would have followed her anywhere.

The other girl was quietly beautiful, like a winter night in motion, with all the inherent danger of frostbite and avalanches in every move she made. But when alone and feeling safe she would relax and tuck herself away with a book, content to just be for as long as she was allowed to do so. Ilia would have loved to be able to have reason to enjoy her friend’s company whenever she wished, but Adam Taurus had taken one look at the daughter of the ex-head of the White Fang and promptly snatched her up for himself. The red-head could only watch from a distance and try to carve as much time out of life to spend with the cat Faunus as possible without the cloying presence of Taurus ensnaring all of the other’s attention.

The day that she saw Blake’s face soften as she gazed after Taurus’ retreating figure was the day that Ilia felt her heart chip. She hadn’t recognized how far the other girl had gotten under her skin, so convinced that the death of her parents had frozen the love right out of her. She took great pains after that to shore up her defenses in any way she could. The easiest and most effective methods were anger and hurt, towards anyone and anything, the humans, the Faunus that judged and blamed the White Fang, Taurus. Blake.

And then Blake ran away and left Ilia to rot within the White Fang, but she didn’t rot. She thrived. She became as merciless as possible, a favored assassin and espionage expert due to her natural camouflage. No one could catch her when she didn’t want to be caught, and she found herself doing greater and more elaborate tasks for Taurus or his minions specifically out of all the people that could be giving her orders. By the time she was reassigned to Menagerie, she couldn’t care less what was happening in the world to the humans. So what if Beacon Academy had fallen and the CCT network was down? So what, even, if Taurus had apparently been involved? Why should she care?

Blake had to ruin everything by running back into her life. For the first time in what felt like forever, Ilia found herself unwilling to take shots that would have easily ended the confrontation before it could start. She didn’t care if Taurus wanted Blake back, she would be happier to see the other girl dead than back within his grasp. The monkey boy...Blake never realized just how alluring she was to people without trying to be, how easily she inspired loyalty in companions, and seeing another brought into her sway made the chameleon Faunus see red long enough that she would have killed him without hesitation, had even tried to. She just couldn’t seem to kill Blake. Warning after warning, confrontation after confrontation, it all came to a head when the Brothers ordered the Belladonna patriarch and matriarch dead and Blake herself captured.

Ilia tried, she tried so hard to be the good White Fang member she had become, to keep her stone shell around her heart, but it didn’t work.

And when she finally met Blake’s eyes for the first time since before this whole mess started, across the heads of defeated White Fang members and surrounded by Faunus and law enforcement alike, Ilia felt something inside her warm.

Turning her back on Taurus? It may just have been the best choice she had ever made.


End file.
